Page 92 of Demo
So, Knox and I helped Clyde through it the best we could. In the beginning, we pretty much force-fed him, and even bathed him.
There were times I helped Knox walk his dad to the bathroom, undress him until he was just in his briefs, then help him step over the tub and under the spray of the shower. Knox and I both got wet as I scrubbed shampoo into his hair, and Knox used a cloth to wash Clyde’s body.
I even shaved Clyde’s face in the bathroom a few times, him sitting on the closed toilet seat as I tried not to nick his skin as I ran the razor along his jaw and rinsed it in the sink. We would sometimes make eye contact, but I never felt the need to say anything. He might reach out and give my hand a squeeze. And I would squeeze back and smile at him, but that was all. I hoped that was enough for him to know I loved him, and I believed he was strong enough to survive this.
But that in itself was a joke because what did I know of love? What did I know about being a partner? Of building a life with someone and having to show up, and stand up every day?
Because when the going got tough, I ran away.
The three of us sat at the table for meals, even if it was takeout, just for some normalcy. And also, maybe even to force all of us to face the fact that Monica’s chair would forever be empty.
We dragged Clyde to the grocery store, the library, or just out for walks to keep him moving. Knox even started dragging him to work, and eventually he started going through the motions without our prompts. But he wasn’t the same.
Who knew if he would ever be the same?
Knox never broke down again after we left the hospital. He cried at the funeral, but even that was just a few tears.
Since his dad was in the spare room, and the other room was an office, Knox and I were sleeping on the pullout couch in the living room, which had permanently been in bed-form since we came back from the hospital.
That first night I let him pull me close. I let him wrap his limbs around me. I cradled him—his face in my neck, his head in my lap—whatever he needed. However I could attempt to help keep him together, I was happy to do it.
And despite our closeness—the accidental grazing of his hand on my breast as we adjusted against the metal bars jabbing into our backs, or the unintentional press of my ass into his groin as we rolled over for the umpteenth time in one night to try to find comfort—we never had any intentions of sex.
Until the night things changed.
One night, a few weeks after Monica’s passing, I had just turned off the TV and reached over to place the remote on the coffee table next to me as I tried to sink into a spot on the sofa sleeper that didn’t have a bony metal rib jabbing into me, when Knox came down the hallway, having just finished up in the bathroom. He stood at the side of the sofa bed and watched as I writhed and wiggled, and squirmed and swore as I tried to get into position, putting a pillow behind my back, then angrily pulling it out and tossing it aside, throwing my hair askew and blowing it out of my face in a huff.
Knox chuckled, and I turned sharply at the sound, in shock. I hadn’t heard him laugh in a long time. It was a lovely sound.
“You know,” I said, leaning up on an elbow. “I would normally be pissed that you find my discomfort so amusing, but since you’re still grieving, I’ll give you a pass.”
Crossing his arms over his chest, Knox looked down at me, a sad smile playing across his lips. “I wasn’t laughing at you.”
I quirked a brow at him. “No? Sure sounded like it.”
He shook his head, a familiar look lighting up his dark stare. “I was thinking that I adore you, and that you’re the most beautiful woman I know.” My breath caught at his words. “I was thinking a better man would tell you to go home and sleep in a real bed, so you don’t have to suffer here with me on a freaking torture device in a sad house.”
I sat up fully.
“I was thinking I should feel bad for wanting you right now. But I don’t.” He kneeled on the bed, and in one crawl was perched next to me, a hand resting on the mattress beside my hip, the other coming up to cup my face. I leaned into it.
“Knox,” I breathed.
Looking me square in the eyes, Knox said, simply, “I don’t want to be sad anymore.”
I was the one who leaned in and closed the distance between our mouths.
Slowly, gently, painstakingly, we caressed our lips and tongues against one another’s, nibbling, gnawing, getting reacquainted with each other’s taste. Knox guided me down onto my back as he lay over me, his hand sliding from my face up into my hair, then back down my cheek to my neck, over my collar bone and toward my breast.
I reached my hand up to cup his jaw as he continued pulling from my lips, and it glided into his hair as he moved to suckle my neck and down my chest.
Reaching over his shoulders I began pulling his shirt up his back, and he broke away from me to sit up and let me pull it off, tossing it to the side. Looking to reciprocate, Knox started pulling at the hem of the Mitchell & Sons T-shirt I had been sleeping in, but as I sat up to let him, my spine rolled over a metal bar, and I cursed.
“Shit!” Knox echoed me. “Here, try this.” He grabbed my hips and softly pulled me down a little further. Then he came back at me.
Deciding to leave my shirt on—which was probably better, anyway, in case Clyde came out and found us, in which case I would have to just die—Knox kissed my stomach as he circled his hands around my hips and ass. He slowly curled his fingers around the waistband of my sleep shorts and my underwear and tugged them down my thighs.
He attempted to kneel so he could pull them all the way down my legs, and I heard a hiss go through his teeth and he tumbled forward half on top of me. “Fucking metal sticking into my kneecap,” he seethed.
